U.S. State Department Special Advisor for International Disability Rights Judith Heumann pauses outside the Gate of Heavenly Peace in Beijing prior to testing out the Forbidden City’s accessible pathway.

Josh Chin/The Wall Street Journal

As she rolled down a corrugated stone ramp leading to the Forbidden City’s Hall of Supreme Harmony, the tremors rocking her electric wheelchair put Judith Heumann, one of the U.S.’s most prominent disability rights activists, in mind of the vibrating loungers one sometimes finds in airports.

“It’s like a free massage,” she said, her voice shaking from a mix of laughter and the juddering of the chair.

The Forbidden City, it’s safe to say, was not built with disabled access in mind. After all, if the only residents who mattered– the emperor and his family – ever found themselves unable (or more likely, unwilling) to walk, a stable of eunuch-powered sedan chairs stood by to carry them gently over the palace’s innumerable marble steps and elevated doorways.

A map of the Forbidden City’s accessible route.

The Palace Museum

In 1995, when Ms. Heumann visited Beijing as a delegate to the Fourth United Nations World Conference on Women, she couldn’t see the palace. Ms. Heumann had polio as a child and has used a wheelchair most of her life.

The situation improved, at least in theory, in 2008, when Beijing installed an accessible pathway through the palace as a part of a nearly 400-million-yuan ($63 million) effort to improve accessibility across the city in the run-up to that year’s Paralympics.

Many of those improvements have been criticized by disabled residents and disability rights advocates as merely cosmetic. Lifts installed in some subway entrances, for instance, are little used and frequently left unmanned, while sidewalk pathways for the blind sometimes lead into tree wells or the sides of buildings.

What about the Forbidden City? On a recent return visit in her new capacity as the U.S. State Department’s Special Advisor for International Disability Rights, Ms. Heumann decided to put the tourist attraction to the test.

It wasn’t always a smooth ride. At one corner near the Hall of Supreme Harmony, a pair of wheelchair signs indicating the direction of the path pointed in opposite directions. An lift that previously would have allowed her to ascend to the top of the towering front gate was taken out because, according to the Forbidden City’s press office, it didn’t get used much and other tourists thought it was ugly. And another a lift that would have allowed her to peer inside the Hall of Preserving Harmony was locked with no attendant in sight.

Contradictory signage on the accessible route near the Hall of Supreme Harmony.

Josh Chin/The Wall Street Journal

Asked whether anyone was available to unlock the lift, a nearby shop attendant replied with a curt, “No.” (The Forbidden City press office later said that an attendant is usually on hand, and that disabled visitors are free to call the museum’s information line for help.)

On the whole, however, Ms. Heumann was pleasantly surprised. Newly laid stones made for fluid traveling through the palace’s expansive courtyards and ramps allowed her to make her way through its imposing doors. An elevator, which she didn’t have time to try, would have allowed her to look out over Tiananmen Square from atop the Gate of Heavenly Peace.

“This is actually pretty impressive. It’s better than a lot of tourist sites I’ve been to,” she said, looking out over the tourist crowds from the platform in front of the palace’s Hall of Union.

Equally striking, according to Ms. Heumann, who grew up struggling to navigate 1950s Brooklyn: how few people were making use of the pathway.

“In New York, even before it was accessible, people in wheelchairs still went out,” she said. “Here, you barely see anyone.”

Maggie Sun, a Beijing-based disability rights advocate with the NGO Handicap International who accompanied Ms. Heumann on the tour, said a culture of protectiveness hampered the ability of disabled people in China to be more independent.

“In China, families see it as their role to take care of disabled people. They want to protect them, so a lot of times they don’t let them out,” she said.

During the same visit to Beijing, Ms. Heumann also met with Chinese officials to lobby for changes to assist China’sdisabled population. Perhaps the most important, she says, is helping cultivate a culture of independence for them through more inclusive education, the eradication of discriminatory policies and creation of more community-based services.

China has made some strides on the education front, recently introducing abraille version of the college entrance examination, or gaokao. But as Ms. Sun noted, all prospective college students are required to undergo a medical exam and Chinese education regulations still allow universities to reject applicants on the basis of physical limitations (in Chinese).

An even more fundamental issue, according to Ms. Heumann, has to do with the way China counts people with disabilities, which affects government spending.

Judith Heumann chats with one of the few other wheelchair users in the Forbidden City, who wanted to know how much her chair cost. (Answer: around $6,000.)

Josh Chin/The Wall Street Journal

The World Health Organization estimates that around 15% of the global population is disabled. But by China’s official statistics,the country’s disabled population numbers 86 million, or only 6% of the total population.

The difference arises because China uses a more restricted standard of disability, according to Nie Jing of the government-affiliated Chinese Disabled Persons Federation. The WHO’s numbers include a wide range of people who suffer limitations in one or more major life activities. China, on the other hand, counts only those who suffer so-called “classic” impairments, including problems with their hearing, vision, speech or mental functions.

Ms. Nie says the Chinese numbers make sense and are set “in accordance with China’s economic development,” says Ms. Nie. “If the number is too high, the government won’t be able to support everyone,” she says.

But Ms. Heumann says money spent toimprove the environment for disabled people can have broader benefits. As she finished her Forbidden City tour, shepointed to a well-dressed woman pushing a large baby stroller along the accessible path.

“The only reason you can have strollers that big is because of the ramps installed everywhere,” she said.

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